Page 25 of One Last Shot
Twice.
And twice, the pretty-but-tough EMT had brought Mike back. Yes, Boo was the real hero of the day.
He’d just been the desperate survivalist wannabe who’d managed, somehow, to find help. Oaken wouldn’t call that heroic. Not when it took about eight cups of coffee to hold himself together.
Not when, every time he closed his eyes, he watched Mike plummet to earth.
So, no to Reynolds’s uber-galling question, the one that’d come at the end of the way-too-leading conversation. He should have seen it coming.
“Unfortunately, the episode is a bust,”Reynolds had said, coming up to him in the ER.
“You think?”
“So we need to come up with plan B.”
Reynolds had then dragged him to the corner with Huxley, their group conversation quiet in the shadowed waiting room. Across the way, Boo and her boss, the chopper pilot Moose, were leaving, but he didn’t bother to raise a hand. They were probably glad to be done with him.
He was glad to be done with this game. He’d known it would end in disaster?—
“We’d like you to stick around Alaska and be our guest star for a pilot series we’re doing.”
He had barely heard Reynolds, so much clutter inside his brain, and should have probably stopped the man right then. But he wasn’t catching up well, and Reynolds kept talking.
“We’d like you to join up with Air OneRescue for a month, train with them, go on some callouts, and learn how to be a rescue tech.”
He just stared at the duo.
Wait—“You’re serious.”
“Yes,” Huxley said. “The Air One team has agreed to the terms and is willing to train you. It’ll be a great show?—”
“You’re out of your mind.” He gave himself a once-over, then glanced at the ER. “Have you not been paying attention at all? Mike was nearly killed—he might die. And I... I haven’t slept in two days. I’m exhausted, I think my jaw is cracked, I hurt everywhere?—”
“You’d have a few days off before we started filming,” Huxley said.
He stood there, undone.
“Listen, Oaken,” Reynolds said. “The thing is, you didn’t technically complete the fifty hours, and... well, we can’t pay out the 50K to Maggie’s Miracle.”
And right then, headlines played in his brain.
Oaken Fox Attacks Double-Crossing Producer . . .
Former Country Music Star Seals the Death of His Career...
One More Victim Joins Fox’s Lineup of Accidents...
He took a breath, schooled his voice. “I think you could say that I fulfilled my contract?—”
“Technically—” Reynolds started.
“I dragged Mike’s body ten miles over tundra and bog and forest and mountainside, then I fell off a freakin’ cliff on my way to get help! I nearly got run over by a car, I haven’t slept in two days, I’m dehydrated, I’m starving, and I hurt everywhere. So, do you want to edit what you’re about to say to me?”
Reynolds closed his mouth, pinched at the edges.
Huxley stepped in front of him. “Oaken, there’s no doubt that Mike owes you his life. It’s not a matter of deserving the 50K. It’s...it’s not there.”
He just blinked at her.